Oct 10, 2014

In recent days lots of gaming solution manufacturers have unleashed new or revamped notebooks taking advantage of NVIDIA’s latest GPU architecture which consists of the GeForce GTX 980M and GTX 970M.

We were expecting a similar announcement from Dell related to its Alienware notebooks, but it appears the producing company has postponed making any GPU updates for the time being. In the meantime, Dell and Intel have partnered up to bring overclocking enthusiasts a nice surprise.

Two overclocked Alienware laptops announced

In a short press release, the chip giant announced the availability of Alienware 17 and 18 with overclocked core i7 CPUs up to 4.4 GHz (for the 18-inch models) or up 4.0 GHz (for the 17-inch model). The larger model can be configured with an Intel Core i7-4940MX (Haswell) processor normally clocked at 3.1GHz (4.0GHz in Turbo Mode) that can be overclocked to reach 4.4GHz. The 17-incher will bundle an Intel Core i7-4910MQ clocked at 2.9GHz (3.9GHz in Turbo Mode) with 4.0GHz in overclock mode. Such frequencies might generate a lot of heat under the hood, but Dell and Intel have thought about this unwanted by-product and have come up with a solution. Alienware engineers have developed a new thermal solution which aids with the dissipation of heat and helps the notebook run in reliable and cool conditions.

Alienware 17 is the less powerful of the duo coming in with less powerful processor solutions and NVIDIA GPUs and starting price of $1,399 / €1,101. On the other hand, Alienware 18 has a starting price of $2,099 / €1,652 and for this money customers will be given access to more advanced processor options, dual NVIDIA graphics in SLI configurations or AMD (Crossfire). Both models support 32GB of RAM and should last you a few hours of game time off the chord.

The thinnest and lightest Alienware comes next month

Dell’s Alienware lineup is quite hailed by gaming enthusiasts for obvious reasons. The producing company is also expected to bring out what’s being called “the thinnest and lightest” model in the lineup in November. The laptop will take advantage of a smaller 13.3-inch display and customers will be given a choice between 1366 x 758, 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution. Under the hood, Alienware 13 will bundle an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M working in concert with Haswell-based Core i3/i5/i7 processors. A Broadwell version is said to be made available at some point in the future.

Dell managed to squeeze all these specs in a laptop weighing just 4.5 lbs / 2.04 kg, so if you want a new, portable machine, keep an eye on the Alienware in November.

Dell and Intel overclock the Alienware 17 and 18Image credits to Alienware